Microelectronic manufacturing techniques have led to the miniaturization of numerous devices. Mobile phones, personal digital assistant devices, and digital cameras are very common examples of the miniaturization trend.
One device that has not seen the advantage of microelectronic manufacturing techniques is the printer. Commercially available printers are large compared to many of the devices they could support. For instance, it is impractical to carry a color printer for the purpose of instantly printing photographs taken with known compact digital cameras.
A compact printhead has been described in co-pending United States Patent Applications filed simultaneously to the present application and hereby incorporated by cross reference:
USSNOur Title09/575,152Fluidic seal for an ink jet nozzle assembly09/575,141Ink jet printhead having a moving nozzle with anexternally arranged actuator09/575,125Method of manufacture of an ink jet printhead having amoving nozzle with an externally arranged actuator09/575,176Ink jet printhead nozzle array09/575,147Nozzle guard for an ink jet printhead
Known ink jet printers are only capable of printing dots in a bi-level fashion whereas known image capture devices (cameras) capture images in continuous tones. It is known in the prior art to transform the continuous tone captured images to bi-level images for printing. The known techniques are processing intensive. A more efficient processing method is required for a compact printer system.